I am the US Business Editor of the Telegraph newspapers and website. Based in New York since August 2007, I've had a ring-side seat for the near-downfall of Wall Street, and the US recession. Here I hope to dig a little deeper, highlighting stories that are less mainstream, as well as writing about the lighter side of life in the Big Apple.

Citigroup's Pandit: how his $1 salary masks an $80m windfall

Vikram Pandit, chief executive of troubled American banking conglomerate Citigroup, has stuck to his guns and taken a $1 salary for 2009 – and no bonus.

Compared to his Wall Street rivals – JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon took $16.7m, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein $9m – he appears to have been woefully modest, and should be congratulated as a man of the people in a time of woeful excess.

Mr Pandit has been in the hot seat at Citigroup throughout much of the crisis

Right? Wrong. For Pandit is no more a man of a people than any of his over-paid Wall Street colleagues.

For a start, in spite of the headlines, Pandit wasn’t paid $1 at all.

Although much was made back in February last year when he told the Citigroup board he would only take a token salary until the bank again becomes profitable, by that point he had already accrued a cash salary of $125,001, which has been paid. In addition, he received $3,750 in pension contributions, which, adding the $1, gives an annual salary of $128,751.

Even on its own, that’s three times the average American worker takes home in a year. Not bad considering Citigroup lost $1.6bn in 2009, or given that he was awarded $38m in 2008, a year in which the bank lost $27.7bn.

But that’s not all. Although Pandit agreed to fall on his sword for 2009, the devil is always in the detail.

Page 12 of Citigroup’s recent proxy filing – posted to shareholders ahead of the bank’s annual meeting on April 20 – reminds investors that Pandit, who lives in a palatial apartment overlooking Central Park, is sitting on an $80m nest-egg.

That’s thanks to Old Lane, the hedge fund he founded and co-ran for 18 months before selling it to Citigroup in April 2007 for $800m, just before the value of financial assets collapsed.

The filing shows that Pandit was required to invest ‘a substantial portion’ of his proceeds back into Old Lane in 2007, which in his case was a sum of $100.2m.

In June 2008, Old Lane was wound up, as a result of its exposure to the financial meltdown, and Citigroup redeemed investors. Even after taking a hair-cut due to the fund's underwhelming performance, Pandit still received $79.7m – money which is currently locked up in a Citibank private account.

Although he can’t touch that money until July 2011, add it to the $38m he was granted in 2008, and Wall Street’s $1 executive is unlikely to go hungry any time soon.